By now we’re accustomed to the idea that the Internet enables us to spread education out across large physical distances. But just as spreading Nutella means thinning it, so does spreading education seem to require making the connections less substantial and real.

That’s one important reason that virtual reality and augmented reality appliances were so prevalent at Shaping the Future III. (The other reasons are that they’re very cool.) They promise to “thicken” the online experience. As Avi Warshavski pointed out in his presentation, this also helps to explain the recent increase in interest in the maker movement and the Internet of things: learners are not just brains in space, as he put it.

Miriam Reiner presented some evidence from her research that suggests…